How to Make a Bridge Hammock out of Our Poncho

Description

Since I've been asked by many people about making a Bridge Hammock, I decided to see if I could use one of our existing ponchos to make one. For this first test I chose our PSSL HD poncho since I knew it would be plenty strong. The goal was to use the tie out tabs that are on the poncho for the purpose of making it into a tarp, the four corners. As it turned out it worked amazingly well, I even tried out the set up on one of our regular ponchos and it worked. A Bridge Hammock is such that you lay flat in it and the head and foot ends are not gathered like a regular hammock. A person can sleep on their stomach or side easily. All that is needed besides the poncho is two pieces of electrical conduit and two 1" webbing straps, connect to trees as usual. Check out our ponchos and other gear on our webpage at http://wildernessinnovation.com

Tags: hammock,poncho,tarp,tree strap,carabiner,bridge hammock,under quilt,survival blanket,stomach sleep,camp,outdoors,shelter,survival gear

Video Transcription

well this where I slept last night I've had a quite a few people over the last while actually well over a couple years actually have asked me about making a bridge hammock and of you know said hey have you ever made a bridge hammock and said now I haven't so I finally got around to it I decided to make one so site kind of rigged one up and slept in it last night

I made this one out this is a HD poncho you know OD green so I just rigged it up as a bridge hammock and so what so what a bridge so what a bridge hammock winds up doing is it gives you a u-shaped trough kind of maybe troughs a bad word but a u-shaped trough that you lay in here instead of being gathered on each end and it's fairly and it's pretty flat I mean you look you look in there you do you do lay very flat and so that's I think that's something else that people like about it it's different because you're laying flat on the bottom some people don't feel like that maybe they're getting squished in too much on the side on a regular hammock where the spreader bar kind of pushes that out so that's not an issue I laid on my side laying on my side was comfortable it was fine but all in all it is a nice setup and it's very roomy like you're a stomach sleeper or something like that or or if when you lay on your side you have to be perfectly flat or whatever I don't know it is it's a plus is that I this this Elan PS SL and normally in a hammock I would like to use a PS SL because you're you know you're tapering at the head and foot it's wide just as wide here's at the bottom as it is in the middle I could use a PSS and be just and be just fine for length yeah I felt like I had so much room in this thing sleeping in it but I felt like I was in swimming man I because it's not gathered on the ends you know it's it's same width all the way down I got in in here and I felt like man I put two or three people in here so it is very roomy so I mean that's that's a big plus and you could use a smaller poncho a PSS for example would work fine for most anybody as far as being big enough for a bridge hammock so let me show you a little bit about how I rigged this thing up and it's kind of jerry-rigged really I just kind of threw some stuff together so so the way we're rigged up here is the whole shootin match is all hanging from the the tarp tie outs that we sell into the poncho so here's how I rigged it so so what I've got here as you can see so I just ran my tab here through a piece of webbing so anyway this is just a piece of EMT electrical conduit and I just shoved it up into the webbing like that and then and then the and then this goes back from here so that forces it to stay wide and it pulls straight out from there so you can see on this end what I did is I just brought this little piece of polyester webbing and I just took it from here up to here and back to that side this end here I just stuck a carabiner in there I tied to I tied this thing off because I I discovered that this thing would slide in the carabiner and then that would make you a lot sighted in the hammock so I need to have that needs to be stitched together right there or something so that so it doesn't move back and forth so it stays in the middle I just use a tree strap right here and you know just use that to hang it up with and that work just fine so as you can see I mean it's a very very simple it's a very simple setup it's nice and as you can see I mean it's it it's nice and it's very wide roomy all the way from one end to the other just h HD poncho and it's very very roomy I got my tape measure here so you can see where we're about three feet about three feet wide with our spreader and it's fairly and it's pretty flat as you can see something else that I did here also is I I snapped on my under quilt so you know so all the accessories still work with it

it was very nice and warm I mean I I felt really felt really good in it so here I am in it and as you can see it's not pushing in on me as much on the sides like a regular hammock would and I've got a I've got a small blanket you know tucked under my head to give me a pillow because this thing is this thing is virtually flat so I want to have a pillow for my head I got to have a pillow to get keep my head up a little bit but anyway then I just just had my survival blanket on top of me you know kind of wrapped around like this and then you know and then I just slept to the night similar to this it can lay on my side very easily because I'm pretty flat and if a person wanted to lay on their stomach it's flat enough you could lay on your stomach as well but I can get right in here yeah we just kind of get in a nice and I did and I did sleep on my side so this so this is how I how I slept last night I just stay late on my side I pulled the blanket clear over the top of me and and I was good to go and I then I fell asleep 20 way there's a there's a bridge hammock made out of our HD poncho so obviously one of the questions will be will we make an adapter kit for the four bridge hammock will we make a separate item as a bridge hammock and the answer today is I don't know I'm happy I'm happy enough with it that I think I think undoubtedly will make some kind of a kit with some like tent tubing we'll use like some five eighths are the five eighths tent tubing so it can kind of fold down at least fold in half so it's not as long and maybe make some straps or some kind of some kind of deal for hooking in the ends or whatever the next question would be will we make a separate a separate deal that would be basically it'd be a poncho a tarp it would be all the regular things but it would be a bridge hammock instead of a regular hammock I mean I'm totally satisfied with the bridge hammock hammock and just using it using it with an HD poncho I would say at some point here we'll probably make a bridge hammock option available in our poncho series so

kind of how we sit right here I got to play with it a little bit more like with the regular not the HD but the regular Poncho's and see you know how that works you